


Why Elementary is Called Elementary, and That's Awesome

by language_escapes



Series: Holmesian Meta [2]
Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes
Summary: This was an essay I wrote about halfway through season one of Elementary, that I am collecting on the AO3 for the first time in an effort to put all my works in one place for easy cataloging.





	

**Why Elementary is Called Elementary, and Why That’s Awesome**

I’ve already spoken at length about why the word “elementary” is straight from canon, even if the phrase “elementary, my dear Watson” as an entirety is not, but I haven’t discussed why naming the show “Elementary” is actually incredibly important and well thought out. And I could have done a vlog about it, but my vlogs are primarily for sussing out the canon elements contained within Elementary, so I figured a poorly constructed essay would suffice for this topic. 

So: of all the things they could have named the show, why Elementary? Or, rather, why is the name Elementary so incredibly perfect and apt and IMPORTANT? I don’t claim to know what the creators intended when they titled the show, but here are my two cents:

First of all, I think the word “elementary”, meaning “pertaining to or dealing with elements, rudiments, or first principles” (according to dictionary.com) gave the audience a strong idea of how they were going to be looking at Holmes and Watson. As I’ve stated before, Elementary is really working to cut through the Holmes mythos, the distillation that the character and the tales have gone through, and gone back to the source. While many adaptations, pastiches, plays, and radio dramas have worked together to create an image of Holmes and Watson that is… less than accurate… Elementary is taking a moment to ask themselves “If we had never heard of Holmes and Watson before, and had to create a picture of them based solely off the books, what would it look like?” They’re back to basics. They’re examining the fundamentals, the rudiments, of the characters.

Additionally, along the lines of “first principles”, the creators are taking a long time to build up the relationship between Holmes and Watson. We meet them at the very beginning of their partnership, and they have to work for it. There is no instantaneous friendship (as, indeed, there wasn’t in the books- instant attraction [in whatever way you want to use the word] but not instant friendship), but we get to watch them building that path together, agonizing step after agonizing step, including missteps and backtracks. Even though the audience knows, because we know the Holmes stories, that they will end up best friends, Elementary does a good job of making us wonder if they’ll really get there. This is relationship and partnership in its infancy, at its most elementary, if you will.

But I think calling it “Elementary” is important for a very different reason. Let’s look at most other adaptations- the RDJ films are called “Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. The BBC show omits the Holmes altogether and just sticks with “Sherlock”. The Granada series back in the day? Took the series titles straight from the books, so we get “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” and “Return of Sherlock Holmes”. Nearly all the adaptations that I own have Sherlock Holmes in the title, if it isn’t the title itself. The exception would be the Russian series, which is called “Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson”. Mind you, that’s what I can see from my sofa, so there may be other exceptions.

Other adaptations privilege Holmes as their focus, and that isn’t necessarily wrong- the original stories certainly were focused around Holmes. Of course, the original stories (from a Watsonian perspective) were written to immortalize Holmes and introduce his methods to a new audience and to rectify the official record, as Watson says, so it makes sense that the shape of the original stories would center around Holmes with Watson standing to the side, the Inspectors on an outer orbit. So various adaptations focusing primarily on Holmes makes a certain amount of sense. But is it wholly accurate?

Most people who play The Game (that is to say, pretend that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were real historical figures, with all that that entails) would argue that Watson had a larger role than presented in the stories and chose to remove himself from the narrative in order to make Holmes seem even smarter, even quicker, even more amazing than he already was. Watson was writing for an audience, and knew what that audience wanted. So he provided it. The stories have lent themselves to over a hundred years of speculation, of people wondering what things Watson didn’t share, what he deliberately hid, and for Christ’s sake, was he just really bad at dates, or did he have an alternative motive for screwing everything up date-wise (honestly, dating a story at a time when Holmes was thought dead is just bad form, Watson)?

But all right, let’s say that the creators of the other adaptations don’t play the Game and are really just looking at the general framework of the stories- naming every adaptation ever “Sherlock Holmes” with some additions and subtractions here is understandable. Or even just going “these stories are about Sherlock Holmes and therefore we shall call it Sherlock Holmes”- yeah, it’s understandable.  
And then there’s Elementary.

Elementary breaks a lot of patterns when it comes to Sherlock Holmes adaptations. It doesn’t have any names in the title. And why? By naming the series Elementary, _they refuse to make the narrative solely about Holmes_. Elementary devotes time to Watson, gives Watson back what was canonically true to the character as well as playing the Game and presuming that Watson did more than initially implied. Elementary understands that consulting detectives work within the framework of a larger law enforcement and then asks what that relationship would really look like- as well as understanding that the police have narrative importance as well. This is a show that takes a look at the survivors of crime, the victims of crime, and the perpetrators of crime- they get to be people, rather than just examples of Holmes’s brilliance. This is a show with New York as its own character, a quiet phantom that sort of glides around, noticeable but not demanding of anything other than recognition. Elementary is named Elementary in order to devote time to many characters rather than just a single one. That’s why get to have episodes like 1x18, “Déjà Vu All Over Again” which is almost entirely about Watson, with Holmes to the side, or episodes like 1x16, “Details” where Marcus Bell is our priority.

And I think it’s called Elementary in order to deconstruct the myth of Sherlock Holmes. If the show was called some variation of “Sherlock Holmes” we, the audience, could have a certain expectation of what Sherlock Holmes should look like, if only through cultural osmosis. But this show introduces us to a recovering addict who hires prostitutes and wanders around shirtless, incidentally showing off his tattoos. This Sherlock Holmes has tics and foibles and flaws that we might not otherwise accept if we had come in expecting a shiny, polished Holmes that, while modern, could still have walked right out of the Strand Magazine in a top hat and tails. Elementary gives us a very, very realistic portrait of what Sherlock Holmes might look like in our day and age- there’s very little glamour attached to him, nothing romantic or idealized, as we (and I include myself in this) have come to see Holmes after years of reading the stories, reading pastiches, and watching adaptations. 

There is the Myth of Sherlock Holmes- and then there is the man. Most adaptations take on the Myth, but Elementary concerns itself with the man, the woman, the police, the city, and all the people who come together to make up a criminal investigation.  
And that, my friends, is one of the reasons why it is fucking awesome.

**Postscript** : This was written in March of 2012, I believe, when Elementary still only had one season, and not even a full one yet. In light of seasons two through four, I think the show still makes a point of taking on the Myth of Sherlock Holmes, but has focused less on Watson than they did in their initial season. Please keep this in mind, looking back on this essay.


End file.
